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Final Technical Report: - Southwest Fisheries Science Center - NOAA

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used to evaluate the ability of summer/fall models to predict winter/spring cetacean density<br />

patterns (Section 3.8).<br />

3.1.2 In situ Oceanographic Measurements<br />

Oceanographic variables were measured on NMFS cetacean and ecosystem assessment<br />

surveys in the ETP during 1986-2006 and in the CCE during 1991-2005. Sea surface temperature<br />

(SST) and salinity (SSS) from a thermosalinograph were recorded continuously at 0.5 to 2<br />

minute intervals and averaged over 5-10 km intervals to reduce both the number of observations<br />

and the discrepancy in sample spacing along and between transects. Thermocline depth (TD,<br />

depth of maximum temperature gradient in a 10 m interval), thermocline strength (TS, ºC m -1 ),<br />

and mixed layer depth (MLD, the depth at which temperature is 0.5ºC less than surface<br />

temperature) were estimated from expendable bathythermograph (XBT) and conductivitytemperature-depth<br />

(CTD) casts collected three to five times per day. Surface chlorophyll (CHL,<br />

mg m -3 ) was estimated at the same stations from the surface bottle on the CTD or from bucket<br />

samples analyzed by standard techniques (Holm-Hansen et al. 1965). CHL was log-transformed<br />

(using natural logarithms) to normalize the data for interpolation. Details of the field methods<br />

can be found in Philbrick et al. (2001, 2003).<br />

3.1.3 Remotely Sensed Oceanographic Measurements<br />

Remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) data were considered for models within<br />

the California Current Ecosystem. Models included SST and measures of its variance as<br />

potential predictors. SST data (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National<br />

Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service/Pathfinder v5) were obtained via an<br />

OPeNDAP server using Matlab code that enabled remote, automated downloading of data for<br />

user-specified positions and resolutions. As part of this analysis (Becker 2007), we examined the<br />

predictive power of six different spatial resolutions of satellite SST data ranging from one pixel<br />

(approximately 31 km 2 ) to 36 pixels (approximately 1,109 km 2 ). Three temporal resolutions<br />

were also compared: 1) 1-day, 2) 8-day, and 3) 30-day composites. We used the coefficient of<br />

variation of SST, CV(SST), for resolutions greater than one pixel as a proxy for frontal regions<br />

in the California Current study area. Results are summarized below and details can be found in<br />

Becker (2007).<br />

Our SST temporal resolution analysis for the satellite-derived data indicated that, while<br />

30-day SST composites had good within-dataset explanatory ability, predictive ability across<br />

datasets was poor at this coarser temporal resolution. A correlation analysis showed high<br />

correlation between the 1-day and 8-day SST values (R 2 = 0.96), indicating that the 8-day<br />

composites provided adequate representation of average conditions on the day of the survey.<br />

Based on this evaluation and the greater availability of 8-day composite data compared to 1-day<br />

composites, we selected 8-day running average SST composites, centered on the date of each<br />

survey segment.<br />

8

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